Daniel Sarnois a homosexual activist who had mailed anonymous death threats over the course of six months to Family Institute of Connecticut Executive Director Peter Wolfgang and his staff because of the organization’s opposition to homosexual marriage. Sarno wrote things like:

No mercy for homophobes. I suggest you make your funeral arrangements real soon, Mr. Wolfgang.

But Sarno was not charged with a federal “hate crime.” Postal inspectors determined the mailbox Sarno was using to send the letters, took down his license plate, followed him home and, in May, 2012, confronted him. The plea agreement states: “Mr. Sarno agrees to plead guilty to an Information charging him with two counts of Mailing Threatening Communications, in violation of 18 USC § 876(c).” Interfering with the mails was what landed Sarno in federal court.

U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Bree Burns could apparently have sentenced Sarno to a maximum of 10 years in prison and imposed $500,000 in fines, according to the plea agreement.

Instead, she refused to punish Sarno at all—giving him five years of probation, no prison time, and no fine.

(Maybe the rest of us could do with some “help” too—or at least protection. After Sarno’s guilty plea, he also allegedly sent a letter to his brother, threatening to kill him also.)

But, after all, Sarno was only messing with some Christians. Peter Wolfgang told VDARE.com:

He made it very clear that he hated me, because of my Christianity, because of my advocacy for traditional values, particularly the traditional definition of marriage, and he made it very clear that he was motivated by an animus towards Christianity and Christians.

Wolfgang sees a pervasive federal double standard against Christians. He says he’s opposed to the “hate crime” concept—as am I—but that, if it exists, it must be applied equally.

Wolfgang, by the way, says he has forgiven Sarno. He praised the investigation of U.S.P.S. Postal Inspector Martin Vega, and the conduct of Assistant U.S. Attorney John H. Durham and even Judge Burns. In particular, Wolfgang emphasized that he believed that Sarno would never have been prosecuted at all were it not for AUSA Durham.

AUSA Durham did not return to my telephone call. But Press Liaison Tom Carson responded with the Feds’ plea agreement and the sentencing memorandum filed by Sarno’s lawyer. Carson wrote:

We can only confirm the charges, and not comment as to why he wasn’t charged with other offenses.

Playing the “crazy card” is not quite as popular as the race card, but it’s gaining. However, as with the race card, only members of politically protected groups get to play the crazy card. As a militant homosexual, Daniel Sarno is in.

White, Christian, heterosexual, American veterans are out. They don’t get to play the crazy card, and don’t have federal judges fawning over them.

Former U.S. Marine Randy Linn, 52 found this out the hard way. Linn took offense at Moslems killing and maiming Americans overseas and at home—in particular the September 11, 2012 attack on the American Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. So, last September 30, Linn swigged 45 beers in six to seven hours, drove from his home in St. Joe, Indiana to Toledo, Ohio with three gasoline cans, entered an empty mosque, and set a prayer rug on fire.

The feds charged that Linn had sought to burn down the mosque. But—45 beers or no—had an old U.S. Marine wanted to burn down that mosque, it would have been a heap of ashes.

Linn later had second thoughts, and sought to withdraw his guilty plea and to get a competency exam (i.e., play the crazy card). But U.S. District Judge Jack Zouhary refused his request, and sentenced him to 20 years in prison and a $1.4 million fine. (Judge Zouhary, a Bush II appointee, is the son of Lebanese immigrants. His office refused to tell me his religion).

Note also that, although according to the Justice Department release linked above, Linn was officially charged with a “hate crime,” the relevant statutes are from §247 of the U.S. Code, i.e., Civil Rights laws, and not “Hate Crime” laws, which are in §249.

How could a “hate crime” be charged as a violation of a non-hate crime law? I repeatedly left telephone messages for U.S. Attorney Steven M. Dettelbach, and federal prosecutors Bridget M. Brennan, Ava Dustin and Gwen Howe-Gebers, who handled the case. I received no response.

The public information officer for USA Dettelbach’s office, Mike Tobin, replied to my initial inquiries with the exact charges against Linn (Damage to Religious Property (18:247(a)(1)) and Damage to Religious Property (247(d)(3)(1s)), Use of Fire or Explosive to Commit a Felony (18:844(h)(1) (2s)), and Use of a Firearm with Crime of Violence (18:924(c) (3s)). But Tobin did not respond to my follow-up inquiry as to how a “hate crime” prosecution can proceed via charges not in the Hate Crime subsection.

The charge of 18:924(c) Use of a Firearm with Crime of Violence (3s) is particularly problematic. First, the main federal crimes that this law is used for, bank robbery and kidnapping, have typically involved a firearm. The law was intended to permit prosecutors to super-charge defendants. A “plea bargain” under such overcharging is no bargain at all. Second, in this particular case, Linn didn’t draw his gun—if he had one: the feds merely alleged that he “appeared” to have one in the surveillance video (and, of course, Linn never got his day in court). To charge someone with using a firearm to commit a crime when he encountered no one sounds ludicrous to me.

(I would have liked to discuss all this with Linn’s public defender, Andrew Hart, but, tragically, he died suddenly after the trial of causes unknown, although only in his late thirties.)

If it sounds as if I am diminishing the severity of Randolph Linn’s crimes…I am.

Obviously we cannot permit people to go around torching property. But for the feds and Judge Zouhary to make such an extraordinary example of a working-class white Christian just for burning a Moslem prayer rug seems to me to be both unjust and insane.

So: no punishment for repeatedly threatening to murder Christians simply for being Christians—vs. 20 years in prison and a $1.4 million fine for an arson that did not seek to harm anyone, and which burned one lousy prayer rug.

In effect, Judge Zouhary appears to me to be establishing Islam as a privileged religion, while Judge Burns is working to delegitimize Christianity and disenfranchise white America Christians.

For perspective, let’s look at two other recent crimes involving religious “hate”

On May 22, 2011, Shaul Spitzer, 17, a member of the Sverer Chassidic sect, firebombed the home of Aron Rottenberg, 44, seeking to murder Rottenberg and his family. Rottenberg sustained burns over 50 percent of his body.

Fifteen of Mullett’s followers were sentenced to one to seven years each in federal prison for the same atrocity against dissidents: Forcibly cutting off the hair of two women and the beards of six Amish men.

According to AP, “The defendants were charged with a hate crime because prosecutors believe religious differences brought about the attacks.” The feds had sought a life sentence.

To add injury to injury, the feds have isolated the convicts in eight different prisons, hundreds of miles away, all but one of them outside of Ohio, making them vulnerable to prison violence, and making it almost impossible for their relatives, who do not drive or fly, to visit them.

Five members of a breakaway Ohio Amish sect head to federal prison on Friday to begin serving sentences for hate crimes, leaving behind a tight-knit religious group coping with the absence of parents for nearly 50 children.

All these so-called “hate crime” and civil rights laws, whether on the state or federal level, are politicizations of the law. They violate the U.S. Constitution, state constitutions, and our cherished Anglo-Saxon legal traditions. They are designed as weapons with which to disenfranchise white, heterosexual Christians, and legally privilege those who hate them. They must be abolished by any means necessary—whether Congressional repeal or federal lawsuit.

Constitution, we don’t need no steenkin’ Constitution!

Nicholas Stix [email him] is a New York City-based journalist and researcher, much of whose work focuses on the nexus of race, crime, and education. He spent much of the 1990s teaching college in New York and New Jersey. His work has appeared in Chronicles, The New York Post, Weekly Standard, Daily News, New York Newsday, American Renaissance, Academic Questions, Ideas on Liberty and many other publications. Stix was the project director and principal author of the NPI report, The State of White America-2007. He blogs at Nicholas Stix, Uncensored.